Chapter 20 Outline

I.                    Dawn of the Industrial Age

1.      For thousands of years after the rise civilization, most people lived and worked in small farming villages.

2.   The Industrial Revolution started in Britain.
3.   New sources of power replaced human and animal power

A.     A Turning Point In History
1. In 1750, most people worked the land, using simple handmade tools.

2.      Like their peasant ancestors, these people knew little of the world that existed beyond their village.

3.      Then the Industrial Revolution began. For growing numbers of people, the rural way of life began to disappear.

B.     A New Agricultural Revolution
 1. The Dutch led the way in the new agricultural revolution. In the 1600s, they   built earthen walls known as dikes to reclaim land from the sea.
2. In the 1700s, British farmers expanded on Dutch experiments. Some farmer’s mixed different kinds of soils to get higher crop yields.

3. Meanwhile, rich landowners pushed ahead with enclosure, the process of taking over fetching off land formerly shared by peasant farmers.

C.      The Population Explosion
1. The agricultural revolution contributed to the rapid growth of population. This population explosion has continued, although today, the center of growth has shifted from the western world to developing nations outside of Europe.
2. Precise population statistics for the 1700s are rare, but those that exist are striking. Britain's population, for example, soared from about 5 million in 1700 to almost 9 million in 1800.
3. The population boom of the 1700s was due more declining death rates than to rising birthrates.

D.     An Energy Revolution
1. A third factor that helped trigger the Industrial Revolution was an "energy revolution."

2.      From the beginning of human history, the energy for work was provided mostly by the muscles of humans and animals. In time, water mills and windmills were added to muscle power.

3.      In the 1700s, inventive minds found ways to use waterpower more   efficiently. Giant water wheels powered machines in the first factories.

II.                 Britain Leads the Way
1. Visitors crowded into London's Crystal Palace in1851. The immense structure housed the Great Exhibition, a display or the "Works of Industrial of all Nations."
2. This early world's fair, and a second one in 1862, offered an awesome array of machines, works of art, and other exhibits.
3. In the century before the exhibitions, Britain had been the first nation to industrialize. Its success became the model for others, in Europe and around the world.

A.    Why Britain?

1.      Though a relatively small nation, Britain had large supplies of coal to power steam engines. It also had plentiful iron to build the new machines.

2.       Britain had been a center of the Science Revolution, which had focused attention on the physical world and developed new devices for managing it.
3. In the 1700s, trade from growing overseas empire helped the British economy prosper. The business class accumulated capital, or wealth to invest in enterprises such as mines, railroads, and factories.

B.      The Age of Iron and Coal
1. New technologies in the iron industry were key to the Industrial Revolution. Iron was needed for machines and steam engines.
2. The Darby family of Coalbrookdale were leaders in developing Britain's iron industry.
3. Darby's experiments led him to produce better-quality and cheaper iron. His son and grandson improved on his methods

C.    Revolutionary Changes in the Textile Industry
1. In the 1600s, cotton cloth imported from India had become increasingly popular. British merchants tried to organize a cotton cloth industry at home.
2. Among the inventions was John Kay's flying shuttle. Using Kay's device, weavers worked so fast that they soon out-spaced spinners.
3. The new machines doomed the old putting out system of manufacturing. They were too large and expensive to operated at home.

D.    Revolution in Transportation
1. As factories sprang up and production increased, entrepreneurs needed faster and cheaper methods of moving goods from place to place.
2. The great revolution in transportation, however, was the invention of the steam locomotive. It was this invention that made possible the growth of railroads.
3. Other inventions applied steam power to improve shipping. Scottish builders made the first paddle wheel steamboat to pull barges along canals.

E.     Looking Ahead
1. As the Industrial Revolution got under way, it triggered a chain reaction. In response to growing demand, inventors developed machines that could produce large quantities of goods more efficiently.
2. As the supply of goods increased, prices fell. Lower prices made goods more affordable and thus created more consumers who further fed the demand for goods.
3. The Industrial Revolution did more than change the way goods were made. It affected people's whole way of life.    

III. Hardships of Early Industrial Life

1.   The Industrial Revolution brought great riches to most of the entrepreneurs who helped set it in motion.

2.   The millions of workers who crowded the new factories, however, the industrial age brought poverty and harsh living conditions.

3.            Reforms would curb many of the worst abuses of the early industrial age in Europe and the Americas, and people at all levels of society would benefit from industrialization. 

A.            The New Industrial City

1.      The Industrial Revolution brought rapid urbanization, or a movement of people to cities.

2.      Some cities grew up around the factories that entrepreneurs built in once-quiet market towns.

3.      In Manchester, as elsewhere, a gulf divided the urban population. The wealthy and the middle class lived in peasant neighborhoods.

B.            The Factory System

1.      The heart of the new industrial city was the factory. There, the technology of the machine age imposed a harsh new way of life on workers.

2.      Women made up much of the new industrial work force. Employers often preferred women workers to men.

3.      Factories and mines hired many boys and girls. Since children helped with farm work, parents accepted the idea of child labor.

C.            Patience Kershaw’s Life Underground

1.      In the 1830s-40s British lawmakers looked into children working in factories when they were only 5 years old. Many children died.

2.      From 17-year-old Patience Kershaw, members of the Ashley Mines Commission heard about life in the coalmines. Kershaw herself worked in the coalmines.

3.      In 1842, her testimony shocked many people in Britain. Slowly, Parliament passed laws to regulate the employment of children in mines and factories.

D.            The Working Class

1.      As the Industrial Revolution began, weavers and other skilled artisans resisted the new “labor-saving” machines that were costing them their jobs.

2.      Rioters in England were called Luddites after a mythical figure, Ned Ludd, whom supposedly destroyed machines in the 1780s.

3.      1700s- John Wesley had been the leader of a religious revival and founded the Methodist Church. Wesley stressed the need for a personal sense of faith.

E.            The New Middle Class

1.      The middle class came from merchants who invested their profits in factories. Others were inventors or artisans who turned their technological know-how into a ticket to a better life.

2.      Middle class women encouraged to become “ladies.” They took up lady like activities such as drawing, embroidery, or playing the piano.

3.      The new middle class valued hard work and the determination to “get ahead.” They had the confidence in themselves and often little sympathy for the poor.

F.            Benefits and Problems

1.      Since the 1800s, people have debated whether the Industrial Revolution was a blessing or a curse. Eventually working class men gained the right to vote, which gave them political power.

2.      Despite the social problems created by the Industrial Revolution-low pay, unemployment, dismal living conditions- the Industrial age did bring material benefits.

3.      As a demand for mass-produced goods grew, new factories opened creating more jobs. Wages rose so that workers had enough left after paying rent and buying food to buy a newspaper or visit a music hall.

IV. New ways of thinking

1.   Thomas Malthus saw the effects of the population explosion-crowded slums, hungry families, and widespread misery.

2.   In 1789, He published an “Essay on the Principle of Population.” Poverty and misery, he concluded, were unavoidable because the population was increasing faster than the food supply.

3.   Malthus was one of the many thinkers who tried to understand the staggering changes taking place in the early industrial age.

A.            Laissez-Faire Economics

1.      The prophet of Laissez Faire economics was Adam Smith. Smith believed that a free market-the unregulated exchange of goods and services-would eventually help everyone, not just the rich.

2.      Like Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Thomas Malthus writings on population shaped economic thinking for generations. Malthus grimly predicted the population would outpace the food supply.

3.      Another influential economist was David Ricardo, agreed with Malthus that the poor had too many children. In his, “Iron law of Wages,” Ricardo noted that when wages were high, families had more children.

B.            The Utilitarians

1.      By 1800, Jeremy Bentham was preaching utilitarianism, the idea that the goal of society should be “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” of its citizens.

2.      Bentham’s chief follower, John Stuart Mill, also argued that actions are right if they promote happiness and wrong if they cause pain.

3.      Mill wanted the government to step in and improve the hard lives of the working class. He further called for giving the vote to workers and women.

C.            Emergence of Socialism

1.      To end poverty and injustice, thinkers offered a radical solution- socialism. Under socialism, the people as whole rather than private individuals would own and operate the “means of production.”

2.      Early socialists tried to build self-sufficient communities in which all work was shared and all property was owned in common. When there was no difference between rich and poor, they felt, fighting between people would disappear.

3.      A poor welsh boy, Robert Owen became a successful mill owner. Unlike most self-made industrialists at the time, he refused to use child labor.

D.            The “Scientific Socialism” of Karl Marx

1.      1840s- Karl Marx, a German philosopher, condemned the ideas of the Utopians as unrealistic idealism. He put forth a new theory, “scientific socialism,” which he exclaimed was based on a scientific study of history.

2.      In 1848- Marx and Frederick Engels, another German socialist, published a pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto. Communism is a form of socialism that sees class struggle between employers and employees as inevitable.

3.      In the Manifesto, Marx theorized that economics was the driving force in history. Marx said, the “haves,” were the bourgeoisie, or middle class. The “have-nots” were the proletariat, or working class.